Straps are used to hold a variety of objects together. For example, a retainer strap may be attached to the earpieces of a pair of eyeglasses, including sunglasses, to hold them in place on a user's face. Short elastic straps may be utilized to hold the eyeglasses in place during physical activities such as various sporting events. Longer, generally non-elastic straps connected to the earpieces may be placed around a user's neck, so that the user can remove the eyeglasses from his face and let them hang by the retainer strap when not in use. However, the user still has to contend with uncomfortable earpieces and with strap-connecting mechanisms that add bulk or come loose from the earpieces.
A known solution to this problem has been utilized with sunglasses in an ophthalmologist's eye care center. The sunglasses were provided to patients who had had their eyes dilated during various procedures in the eye care center. An earpiece retainer pin was removed from the frame of the sunglasses, and the earpieces were removed. The pin was pierced through a retainer strap and was then replaced in the frame, thereby permanently attaching the retainer strap to the eyeglass rim.
Although this solved the problem of uncomfortable earpieces, it did not provide the user with the ability to interchange retainer straps or move a retainer strap from one pair of eyeglasses to another.
Co-owned U.S. Pat. No. 7,427,133 discloses an earpiece-less eyeglass frame that utilizes a ball-and-socket mechanism for quickly and easily attaching and detaching a strap to the temple end of the eyeglasses. The connector mechanism includes a “stemball” that is connected into the distal end of an eyeglass retainer strap. The stemball is sized for insertion into a socket in the end of the plastic eyeglass frame where a traditional earpiece would normally be attached. The stemball is initially inserted into a round opening of the socket in the eyeglass frame. The stemball is then slid by its shaft past a narrow restriction in the body of the socket into a secondary distal socket where it “snaps/clicks” into place.